I know we're all aware that AI-generated text (and other content) has started appearing all over the place, and understandably people on MN (as elsewhere) are concerned that they're having their time wasted by AI-written posts masquerading as genuine human contributions. But IMO, while AI-hunting is an understandable response, it's becoming a more widespread problem on MN. I feel it might be worth thinking about explicitly including it in the guidelines on troll-hunting in general.
Examples of AI-hunting on this thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5272283-fleecing-tourists-in-summer-with-high-prices — this is the one that prompted me to post this afternoon, but it's something I see a lot of now.
I understand the urge for posters to demonstrate that they haven't been "taken in", or to warn others against investing in or wasting time on a potentially bad-faith poster. But the same would apply to other types of trolling and bad-faith posting, where posters are advised to simply report rather than engage in troll-hunting. AI posts are presumably an attempt to drive engagement, like much other bad-faith posting. Troll-hunting and AI-hunting can increase engagement with bad-faith posts and threads, disrupt and derail genuine threads, and hurt those falsely accused of posting in bad faith.
There's also a disability aspect that I feel needs to be taken into account here. It's started to be recognised that texts written by autistic people are more likely to be misidentified as AI-generated. Autistic people are being routinely accused and discredited because of natural features of their writing style that they can't help. It's unfortunate that this also plays into old stereotypes and prejudices about autistic people being robotic, computer-like, or otherwise less than fully human, because it means that the false accusations can hurt more when they happen. I'm autistic, and my posts on MN have been dismissed and mocked as AI on MN more than once.
Is this something that could be considered as an amendment to the Talk Guidelines subsection on troll-hunting?